The transformation had already happened. The world simply hadn’t caught up yet.

Felara stood in the center of what had been the Iravel Valley—a fertile basin now unrecognizable. Her right foot had sunk deep into the mountainside, compressing stone until it fractured like thin ice. The valley floor lay pressed several hundred feet lower than before, its rivers diverted into new, chaotic paths.

The forest below her shimmered with displaced dust. Whole groves had collapsed into a circular pattern where her weight had settled. Every movement she made drew out a deep, continental groan from the earth itself.

Felara blinked once, slowly. The motion sent air sweeping through the valley, uprooting trees and scattering debris in wide arcs.

“...What—” Her own voice startled her; it reverberated through the air like thunder rolling through a canyon. “That sound—was that me?”

She looked down, finally noticing the scale of what lay beneath her. The patchwork of fields, the faint, trembling lines of roads, the rivers now flooding from the basin—all of it seemed impossibly small.

“No. No, that’s... that’s not possible.” She lifted her foot; the motion tore free a slab of rock the size of a castle wall. It fell back to the ground with a deep, echoing crack. Dust plumed upward, obscuring entire regions in a gray haze. Felara staggered slightly, catching herself on a nearby peak—which disintegrated under the pressure of her hand.

For a few seconds she simply stared at the ruin spreading outward from her position. The shock faded quickly; her breathing slowed.

“So... the curse was not a curse after all.” A faint smile formed. “It’s a gift.”

She crouched, the shift of weight collapsing another range of hills and setting off distant avalanches. Tiny flickers of light caught her attention—settlements, fires, something moving in panic far below.

“I can see you. You look like specks on a field of grass.” A pause, thoughtful. “Can you see me? Do you understand what’s happened?”

Her wings unfolded instinctively. The motion displaced so much air that the clouds above tore apart, exposing the sky in broad streaks. Magic crackled along the membrane, uncontrolled, spilling arcs of color that raced along the horizon.

Felara straightened again. She turned once, orienting herself by the coastline visible far to the west—a line of silver that seemed within easy reach.

“If I can take a single step that far...” Her eyes narrowed, calculating. “Then what will stop me from walking the whole world?”

The next movement came deliberately. Her heel lifted, grinding through stone and soil; when it touched down again, the shockwave flattened a stretch of forest miles long.

Felara smiled faintly, this time without confusion.

“Let’s find out how far this gift truly goes.”

Felara had stopped growing only moments ago.

What had been a clearing in the forest now lay somewhere under her knee. Water from the valley river was still pouring into the print her foot had left, collecting in a circle almost a mile across. She crouched carefully, wings catching the sun like sheets of glass, trying to understand how a place that once took days to cross could now be spanned by her shadow.

She pressed a fingertip into the ground beside the river. The earth yielded with a wet, muffled crack. When she lifted her hand, a perfect impression remained, quickly filling with water until it joined the river again.

“That’s me. All of this... is me.”

A short laugh slipped out—half disbelief, half delight. The sound rolled across the landscape, shaking leaves from distant trees. She tried to cover her mouth, realized that even the smallest motion scattered another storm of dust, and laughed harder.

Testing her balance, she rose. Soil sloughed from her legs in dark cascades, exposing stretches of stone polished smooth by pressure. Each shift of weight sent visible waves through the nearby lakes. She turned in place, examining the horizon, the absolute highest mountains barely higher than her knee.

“Oh, this is wonderful! Look how tiny it all is. You could hide whole forests in my footprints.”

Curiosity overtook her caution. She lowered one foot into a lake, watching the water surge outward in a circular wall before rushing back around her ankle. When she drew it out again, half the shoreline went with it.

“Oops. Hm. That felt... interesting.”

Her wings flexed. The motion stirred a gale that stripped the clouds from the sky. She twirled once, testing how far her hair would swing, how long the echo of her movement would last.

Satisfied, she settled into a crouch again, smiling broadly.

“All right then. Let’s see what else there is to play with.”

The land waited, silent but trembling, while Felara considered her next experiment.